Yes, I recently received an ATI Radion X1300 XGE 512MB Directx 9.0 graphics card! My originally crappy computer was completely transformed from this upgrade. Previously, I couldn't even use the pixel shaders in Morrowind, but now I'm running games like Battlefield 2 with 50 bots, near lagless (would be completely lagless, but my CPU isn't so great).

I bought Company of Heroes while looking for a new gaming chair. The game is excellent; until this game, I was never impressed with 3D RTS games, as I preferred the large-scale engagements of Age of Empires only available through the smooth running of its 2D goodness. But, CoH changed this. The Havok physics complement it in a way I would have never imagined; tanks blasting through walls, soldiers being shredded my MG42s and 30-cals, artillery blowing people to bits. The vehicle models easily bypass those of Call of Duty 2 and 3; the tanks look mind-blowingly realistic.

However, the campaign was fairly short and very few multiplayer maps were included. There are already many mods available for it; I particularly enjoy the KMOD, which increases the lethality of the game and makes it much more realistic. There are also many great maps available for download.

So, I've been using my PC much more than my 360, lately, as it seems the 360 hasn't been all that fun lately. Gears' multiplayer sucks and the singleplayer is all played out. Rainbow Six has great multiplayer but there are a lot of jerks ruining it. Hopefully, Crackdown and the upcoming Halo 3 beta will bring some more fun times to Xbox Live.

I haven't been on in a loooong time . . . been using other places. Xbox.com, achieve360points.com, etc . . . great websites and great forums!

Anyway, 'tis November 7th, 2006, and EB has failed me. No Gears of War. Thankfully, I just recently got "the call" and I shall be picking up a copy tomorrow. At least no more uncertainty!

I'm looking forward to some good 'ol chainsaw action, and me and my friend are going to play co-op first up. We'll be totally taken by surprised when we see our first Corpser.

Ah, Xbox Live is down, so I have time to post a message here . . .

I found out how to fix Oblivion! After perusing the Bethesda forums, I discovered it was a common problem: something about the hard drive memory cache. Anyway, if anyone else has the problem, simply hold down the "A" button at the Xbox 360 logo screen as the game is starting up to dump the cache files. It makes the game run sooo much smoother!

In other news, I received the latest issue of OXM. The Darkness looks amazing, though I'm a bit disenchanted from Gears of War. If you ask me, it's right in front of their faces that Oblivion is already the killer-app for the 360 . . . Gears of War won't become the next Halo; I can predict that. For one, it's in a third-person perspective. Two, they mentioned you can't blow through the game rambo-style - you'll die. In Halo, you could play rambo-style for the first two difficulties, and get all the death in the latter two. Hopefully, Gamespot won't be as swayed by graphics as they've shown so far in their review for Gears of War . . .

As said, The Darkness looks fantastic. Those darklings, or whatever, sound awesome. Just imagine . . . sending those into a building with only one entrance, while you wait outside to catch any fleeing civilian - and impale them with your tentacles! Mwahaha!

I'd also like to mention I bought two shirts of jinx.com. One says "Your skill in reading has increased by 1 point," which my friend - who plays Oblivion near-constantly - thinks is funny as something really, really funny. I also bought the "Wooo!" shirt, by Gamespot, which pictures a guy freaking out with a controller in his hands. The description was that we usually play games with a bored expression . . .

So, that's about it. I wonder when Xbox Live will be fixed?

I managed to get the Xbox to Texas, but now that it's back, I'm having some problems with Oblivion. The other games work fine, so it's only Oblivion . . .

Anyway, the loading times have gotten slower, and when in exterior cells, it will now pause during "loading area", and trees and stones take longer to pop up and actually pop up instead of fading in. Sometimes there's a lot of lag in the menus. What's really annoying - and happens in all cells - is that the sound will skip. For a moment, there will be no sound, but it will come back in a flood a moment later - like there's nothing when I pull out my sword and slash an opponent, but a moment later I will hear "pull-sword-slash-aaargh!" at the same time.

I was thinking about either buying another copy or checking on the warranty, or maybe asking Bethesda technical support (if there is one). Does anyone have any ideas to help me fix the problem?

Well, I just finished my 42-hour-straight gaming marathon . . . I finished the main quest of Oblivion, got top rank in the Dark Brotherhood and Arena, got suspended from the Mage's Guild after nearly finishing all of their stupid quests to get into the Arcane University . . . and finished about a billion other side quests. Some of the quests were the best I've ever played in any game ever, such as the Dark Brotherhood quest where you must murder everyone at the party. It's like that one book, Westing Game maybe, but you're the murderer. Others were terrible, like the one to requisition help for Bruma. Every frickin' city made me close a gate to Oblivion! And they only gave me, what, a dozen men when I finished? Plus, the quest to close the Great Gate was seriously bugged for me; it didn't teleport me out when I closed it, and I had to slowly make my way back to the Great Gate and walk through it back to the heir.

Anyway, gamespot gave it a 9.6. 'Nuff said. I do agree with the technical problems; sometimes there's a lot of lag, and I've counted twenty seconds on one of the loading times. You, reader - count to twenty seconds! It's a long time, isn't it?

Well, now I'm going on vacation. To Texas. Minus the Xbox 360. It's going to be a loooooong week.

Beside my shaking hands, the Collector's Edition of The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion lays in its amazing glory. If I, Raylen12, fail to return, then I, Raylen12, am probably glued to the screen, playing Oblivion.

Initial Thoughts: OMIGOD ITS SO AWESOME AWESOME AWESOME ITS BETTER THAN CRACK!

I've also logged onto Xbox Live shortly with the game, so it should appear on my gamercard soon. You probably won't see me until April.

                                          Thank God I'm done with this post,

                                                                   Raylen12

• Reading: Ender's Game
• Listening to: Demon Days (Gorillaz)
• Playing: Need for Speed: Most Wanted

I traded CoD2 for Need for Speed: Most Wanted with my friend for the weekend. While he faces the masses of modding Germans on Veteran difficulty, I'm blowin' through NfS:MW. It's LOOONG, and it is getting pretty hard. But the cop chases or so fun.

I also changed my gamertag, as you can see, to NewCode12. People where calling  Sake (SAYK) "SAHK-AY", like the Japanese or Chinese wine noodles. But I like NewCode.

Three days left! Too bad I have to visit the dentist's office before I head to EB to pick up my copy. I can't sleep for the dreams wracking my tortured mind . . . I can't last much longer . . .

Huh, I posted this before but it did not show up . . .

Anyway, I bought Ninja Gaiden Black for the Xbox. It's really hard; thankfully, I found out how to get the Ninja Dog difficulty (I'm not bad enough to stumble upon it; I actually had to look it up on Gamespot) and it's not too bad now. After the second level, the game starts getting really fun.

I've been playing a bit of Halo 2 and PDZ on Xbox Live. My friend insists on playing Halo 2, even when he has an X360. I guess I kinda understand. Perfect D ark Zero is nearly the worst first-person shooter I have ever played, but it is still pretty fun online. Except the people never talk.

18 days remaining!

EDIT: Gamespot is frickin' annoying me! I just wrote out a huge message, but when I hit "submit" it just popped up with a fresh page. I'll have to start ctrl+c everything a do before I hit submit.

The basic gist of the message was: Morrowind crashes every few seconds now, thanks to the Silgrad Tower mod that I really wanted to play but will have to remove now.

I also made a photoshop album: http://photobucket.com/albums/f366/raylen12/?sc=6 for TESF, but the screenies came out way too small. Well, it's here, if you want to take a look. I might have to turn down the screen resolution if its going to be that way.

I just watched the documentary Grizzly Man on the Discovery Channel. It's very emotional, and very, very sad . . . But I must agree that he was determined at his own destruction. There was no way any person could survive their entire life in doing such things as he did. But he also, really, had a determination to save the animals, so much as to blatantly defy the government, in order to enforce his idea of protection. He believed that only he could protect the animals of the grizzly maze . . . not a park protection, or even a government. He believed in a universal harmony, and refused repeatedly to accept the true nature of things: that animals, just like the humans he cursed, were, and are, murderers, that will kill to survive, even kill their "only protector". It was obvious by the latter parts of the film that he was becoming increasingly eccentric and paranoid, which was especially apparent as he repeatedly, verbally, attacked the human world. But, even so, he was innocent, almost childish, in his worship of the animals, and it was so, so apparent that he really, really loved these animals, even though he knew that they could kill him, and very well might. He was dedicated, and he did have a death wish. But he lived his life to protect those bears, and those foxes, and the animals of the grizzly maze. And, when watching those tapes, you could see that those animals had an intelligence, and the entire documentary was inspiring. It was sad. It made you really fear that bear, when you looked in his eyes, and knew that that bear killed a man, killed the man that lived his life to protect them. It made you love those animals that he loved, and died from. He swore to fight the government, just to protect those animals . . . and that is truly inspiring.

Now, everyone who hasn't seen this video is probably laughing now . . . But if you see it, you will either think he is some left-wing maniac, or you will agree with me: that Grizzly Man was an inspiring tale that told the story of a man who overcame drug abuse and drinking to exile himself among these animals and to swear his life to protect them, and made you know that there is still some goodness in the human race.

Just as the topic states, I finally preordered Oblivion! Now I'm guaranteed one, come the day after launch date. According to EB employees, the game will definitely be in by March 21st, and that I should sleep by the phone, lest I miss the message. Of course, even if I missed their call, I'll still be there March 20 and 21.

In other news, I had my 200th post. How do people get past 1000?

I also logged onto Xbox Live today. Call of Duty 2 was fun, but there was serious lag, the worst I've ever had. I didn't try Perfect Dark Zero, because I dislike that type of lobby. Instead of randomly matching you up in the gametype of your choice, you must either choose randomly from Dark-Ops or Deathmatch, or butt in on someone else's created game, which always feels uncomfortable to me.

</begin rant> Freewriter's brother, timotisomethingorother, invited me to become a co-founder of "xbox gamer tag union". He had the brash stupidity to ask me to join a union WITHOUT PROPER CAPITILIZATION? (forgive the capitals)Plus, I hate him, and I am completely mystified at how he is already level 8, when I've never seen him before. </end rant>

Other than that, everything is going fine. Instead of downloading mods from my dial-up, I now take a CD to the DSL and download through there. Why didn't I think of this sooner? Still, there are errors, and a lot of times .exe extractors don't work.